Bushco and torture

'Prisoners of war' vs. 'Unlawful combatants.'
Philip Zimbardo is the kind of guy who would be targeted by right-wing moron and highly-paid propaganda expert Horowitz. The Stanford psychology professor, who has some serious credentials, in his last lecture before retirement, and not doubt not for the fist time, blamed BushCo higher-ups, rather than U.S. Military personnel, for the style of torture and abuse we've heard about over the last couple years.

Zimbardo — who spent months interviewing [Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick II, the highest-ranking officer implicated in the scandal] and his friends and relatives, and poring over his work history and personal background — argued that his sentence should be lessened.

Based on academic research, Zimbardo said, very few people could resist the situational pressures of Abu Ghraib — particularly Army reservists, themselves subject to hazing and abuse by active duty soldiers.

"There's only one rung lower than reservists, and that's the detainees," Zimbardo said while flashing dozens of "trophy photos" of Iraqi prisoners in naked piles, being menaced by snarling German shepherds, covered in blood, or with their eyes missing.

Zimbardo, an unusual icon of both academia and pop culture also starred in the 2002 Discovery Channel reality show "The Human Zoo" and the PBS series "Discovering Psychology."

On Wednesday, he displayed a grainy, 1971 photo of Stanford's mock prisoners with bags over their heads, guards looking on casually — then switched to an eerily similar digital photo

The SF Chron article is here.